Commonwealth Connections Academy’s state-winning Real World Design Challenge team placed second in the country at the 2013 National RWDC engineering competition in Washington, D.C., topping 26 teams from other states and territories.

The academy was the sole cyber charter school to qualify and participate in this year’s national competition on April 20, and is also the only cyber school to place within the top three nationally since the competition began five years ago.

The CCA Innovators was comprised of sophomore Courtney Thurston of Mechanicsburg and senior Alexis Amelotte-Myers of York and five other high school students from different areas of the state. The team had the added challenge of working with each other over long distances. They communicated mostly online through CCA’s LiveLesson technology, which the team used as a virtual meeting room.

The Real World Design Challenge is an annual competition that provides high school students the unique opportunity to work on real world engineering challenges in a team environment. Each year, student teams are asked to address a challenge that confronts our nation's leading industries.

This year’s competition challenged the students to design an unmanned aerial vehicle with engineering software and plan a mission to rescue a child lost in the Philmont Ranch in New Mexico. The teams were instructed to find the child in the least amount of time while also minimizing the total cost.

After the state competitions were completed in February, the Challenge officials modified the problem to create a more difficult mission for the teams, including adding trees into the search area. CCA’s team worked for the next two months adjusting and refining their design and flight plan. The team’s final project included a 78-page project notebook, design and fuel plans and other details for the judges.

“It had been my dream for an entire year to make the National finals again and contend for the championship title,” Thurston said. “I'm amazed every year by what other teams are able to accomplish, and I'm extremely proud of our own performance. There's nothing in the world as fulfilling as working incredibly hard for something and meeting that goal. Second in the nation is an incredible accomplishment.”